Popcorn Balls And Reflections On Biting Off More Than You Can Chew As A Writer

For a few years now, my blog post for the week leading up to Halloween has been candy-themed. Last year's, which was inspired by the candy salad trend on social media, was a bit of a diversion from that.

via Canva

This year, I'm taking another small step from that tradition because it's not actually about candy. Rather, we'll be talking about another treat I associate with Halloween and trick-or-treating: popcorn balls.

If you've never had one, it's like a Rice Crispies Treat bar except instead of a puffed rice cereal, it's popcorn. Although rare, there were one or two times I snagged an individually-wrapped one making the rounds in the neighborhood on Halloween night or had a teacher pass them out as part of classroom festivities.

Compared to more commonly handed out goodies like fun-sized Kit-Kats and Snickers, popcorn balls were a commodity. For one thing, they were massive in size. And when you're a kid, getting a treat that's bigger than your hand in fun seasonal packaging was hitting the jackpot. Not to mention the combination of sweet and salty is always a crowd favorite.

But looking back, they weren't exactly the easiest to eat. For one thing, they could be difficult to bite into. You couldn't always get your mouth around it at a good angle.

And unless you ate it all in one sitting or wrapped it up for later, it would likely get stale and soggy. If you ask me, soggy popcorn is more of a trick than a treat.

It's kind of like a solid chocolate bunny on Easter. After you've settled the debate of ears-first vs butt-first, you eventually get to the middle which, if you're not breaking the bunny into pieces, tends to become a slobbery mess with half-fingerprints melted into it and teeth marks scraped all across its surface. It's so much more unpleasant to eat—so much so that a math professor used his toddler's chocolate bunny as an example when describing something to do with remainders and discarding the unwanted, useless chunk.

We know how it's going to go, yet we can't resist. Part of that is the novelty of it and the nostalgia. We gotta go for that big bite, even if we end up biting off more than we can chew.

It's also a mistake writers make all the time, especially those who are just starting out.

We start writing out of a passion for storytelling. Maybe it's something you've always felt called to do, or it might be something you've only recently discovered about yourself. But no matter how you begin, it's often because there is something rooted deeply in our core that won't let us not write.

Excitement becomes characters who feel like family and settings that become our escape and solace in an at-times unkind world.

But ✨vibes✨ alone do not a book make.

That excitement can quickly snowball into a behemoth of a draft. For me, it was what I nicknamed "Regency Era Downton Abbey," my first-ever stab at writing a novel that was very evidently written by a teenager in the 2010s. At its highest, it was approximately 180,000 words, with a decent amount of depth that I am arguably impressed with fifteen-year-old Avril for coming up with (though a lot of that length also comes every single character having backstories delivered in twenty pages' worth of a soliloquy and multiple, intertwined love triangles with love interests that were, in retrospect, pretty toxic and very evidently written by a teenager in the 2010s).

It took me close to four years to finish the first draft. And from there, I'd spend years editing it on and off, before making the difficult decision to shelve it for an indeterminate amount of time.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of elements I appreciate about that project. It has its place in my heart, not just because it was my first-ever stab at writing a novel. There are good parts. Unfortunately, those merits are overshadowed by its flaws.

As a writer, I'd bitten off more than I could chew.

I hadn't had any formal creative writing instruction. Even though I was an avid reader all through school and beyond, I hadn't learned to identify why a story works apart from ✨vibes✨. Structure? Pah! Too constricting! Too formulaic! I don't need no heckin' structure!

Spoiler alert: I did need structure. Not to mention a shred or twelve of personality in my writing style. It was rough.

I think a lot of writers wing it on their first go. Even if they're a Plotter. The job of the first book you write is often considered to be teaching you how to write a book. It may not see the light of day, but it's not without merit or worth.

One piece of writing advice I wish I'd heeded sooner: don't bite off more than you can chew. As tempting as that big, shiny, popcorn ball of a book idea might be, you may realize you can't get a good enough grip on it to truly dig in. Over time, it becomes a sticky, chewy mess that isn't as much fun to have as a crunchy treat right out of the pouch. You feel compelled to finish it, even though it's no longer as appetizing or possibly even a chore to get through.

Like a gigantic jawbreaker that you've licked all the color and flavor off of: a bland, white ball of nothing.

This isn't to say you shouldn't chase those big story ideas. It's just important to understand that learning how to write through those bigger story ideas might be more to grapple with than shorter works. That's part of the reason Intro to Creative Writing classes will have you work on short stories first rather than churning out a full-length novel. It's easier to develop those skills on a smaller scale so you can wield them effectively when you do get to those larger projects.

Had I started out with short stories, that mammoth of a first novel may have been less of a dumpster fire, at least in terms of structure and understanding how to implement various tropes (though things like toxic love interest and intersecting love triangles are another matter). It still wouldn't have been perfect or publishable, but editing it might have been more manageable.

Speaking of editing, that, too, can be overwhelming. Remember: you don't have to fix everything in one sweep. That's why editing is done in stages, from developmental editing to copy editing. Maybe the first round of your self-edits focuses on character arcs and dialogue, and you work on fleshing out the world in the next.

The seemingly endless loop of revisions without noticeable improvement was what turned that WIP into a soggy popcorn ball. A flavorless jawbreaker. It's not that I lost my love for the project, it just became unpleasant to work on, and trying to make myself to stick with it made writing less of a treat.

Taking my writing process in smaller steps has made a world of difference because it gave me the room for growth and the time I needed to learn who I am as a writer—which is perhaps the most important thing to learn about writing!

There's a hack you'll see going around this time of year of dipping apple slices into your candy coating of choice, instead of the whole thing so they're easier for kids to eat, and I'd love to see that applied to popcorn balls. Maybe if you made them the size of cake pops and turned them into little morsels...

As for writing, remember that it's sometimes wise to break things into smaller chunks instead of tackling them all at once. Those smaller steps will help you take strides in the long run!

You don't have to have it all figured out. You can still work on larger-scale projects. But you may find them easier to navigate when they're taken on in bite-sized pieces.